Systems which automatically distribute customer contacts or calls (generically referred to as “ACD”) are often employed in telemarketing environments in which agents stationed at agent telephone sets answer many different types of telephone calls and other types of customer contacts (e.g., VoIP, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messages, other Internet contacts, etc.) from customers during a work day. As referred to herein, an ACD may be referred to as an automatic call distributor or an automatic contact distributor because the ACD handles a variety of communication media. In other words, the ACD handles many forms of communication, not just telephone calls in which a potential customer speaks with an agent. The term “ACD” may apply to any type of transaction processing system, and need not apply only to dedicated telemarketing systems or automatic call distributors. In some known ACD's, the agent may receive certain information about the type of customer call (i.e. contact) on a visual display at the agent set when a call or contact is distributed to the agent. An ACD is any such system which performs these functions and, for example, may employ a wide variety of architectures including integrated centralized systems, distributed systems, systems using one or more personal computers or servers, etc.
ACDs may process inbound or outbound calls (i.e. customer contacts). Typically, a controller monitors the workload of the ACDs agents. When the workload of inbound calls fall below some threshold value, the controller may begin to initiate outbound calls, distributing outbound calls to agents based upon some criteria (e.g. idle time).
In addition to placing and distributing calls, an ACD may also identify and display documents on agent terminals as an aid to processing the calls. In the case of incoming calls, the calls may be received along with dialed number identification service (DNIS) and/or automatic number identification (ANI) information. ANI may be used to identify a caller at the same instant as the call is delivered to the ACD. The controller of the ACD may use the ANI information to retrieve and display customer records on a terminal of the agent selected to handle the call at the same instant that the call is delivered to the agent.
In addition, textual information may be displayed on a terminal of the assigned agent that guides the agent through a sales presentation. DNIS information may be used to identify an intended call target and to select an appropriate sales presentation for use by the agent based upon the intended call target.
While automatic call distributors work relatively well, they are not particularly well suited to routing calls based upon multiple attributes or based upon attributes about multiple entities or resources associated with the call. Current routing capabilities are also not well suited to creating and utilizing user definable and expandable attribute lists to match the customer with an agent while further taking into consideration business and environmental attributes in a combinational fashion.
Current ACDs also typically do not allow routing based on the prioritization of multiple attributes or for creating dependencies between the attributes for the different entities or resources associated with the call. Accordingly, a need exists for a better method for creating and analyzing user definable and expandable attributes about multiple entities or resources associated with a call and then analyzing those attributes based upon priority and dependency criteria so as to route calls, whether incoming or outgoing, to an agent who is highly qualified to handle the call.
In this way the overall quality of the services provided by the company through its call in customer service can be improved. For example, calls can be not merely handled by a “repair” agent, but by an agent who specializes in repair of its equipment owned by the caller. Further, by the maintenance of databases containing updateable information about the business customer, the need for the customer to engage a digit selection process is reduced.